Our opinion: The state Legislature can’t do what’s required to avoid extra elections. How many voters will want to go to the polls three times, just for the primaries? Where else but New York would primary elections on three different dates next year be so much as a remote possibility? In what other state would that […]
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Our opinion: Less than half the people out of work are getting unemployment checks. What do they do then? So here’s the latest news in the painfully long-running story of our economic crisis. The unemployment rate is down, ever so slightly, to 9 percent. The number of people with paying jobs is up, just a bit, […]
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Our opinion: Rep. Gibson and Rep. Tonko push for funding for disaster aid for farmers. The gamesmanship over the federal budget demonstrates a disregard for the force of nature. Late summer brought New York and its farms the devastation of two tropical storms, in just a matter of weeks. Fall has parts of the Hudson Valley […]
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Our opinion: The President wants to aid people with excessively high mortgage payments. Economic recovery requires dealing with the casualties of the housing crisis. Why, it’s President Obama, promising a modest extension of government efforts to relieve some 1 million homeowners of the second-biggest impediment to any hopes for an economic recovery. That would be excessively […]
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Early reports from the still-secret and still-ongoing talks by the House-Senate “supercommittee” charged with coming up with $1.2 trillion in federal budget cuts over the next decade suggest the panel is headed toward impasse. The committee is stuck on — surprise — raising taxes as part of its package. While Democrats have been offering to […]
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Our opinion: Just what do guns and abortion have to do with this nation’s problems right now? Everything, apparently, to House Republicans. Americans are crying out for action from Washington on the economy, on unrelenting high unemployment, on the deterioration of the nation’s middle class. So what does the House of Representatives put on its […]
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Our opinion: Congress and the President want to further reduce home heating aid. Has the government become that desperate? Median incomes are falling at an alarming rate. Poverty is up. Unemployment remains stubbornly high. And the prospects for real economic recovery seem elusive at best. So what are they itching to do in Washington? Pass President […]
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